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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Climber who wrote (9583)	11/9/2001 9:07:15 PM
From: Climber	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Capture of City Would Provide First Victory in U.S. Campaign By MICHAEL R. GORDON WASHINGTON, Nov. 9 — The capture of Mazar-i-Shaif would deliver the first tangible victory for the American-led military campaign against the Taliban after more than a month of war. The Northern Alliance's seizure of the city would cut off Taliban forces to the east from their supplies. It would open up a land corridor for humanitarian aid for millions of starving Afghans. It would provide the United States military with a potential staging ground for military operations inside the country. And it would provide a badly needed public relations boost for a military operation that has been long on airstrikes — more than 8,000 bombs have been dropped in the fighting — but devoid of gains on the ground. "I don't think there is any doubt at all that the military momentum is now moving against the Taliban," Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain said today, eager to exploit the first bit of good news. "That is because of the concerted effort that has been made from the airstrikes, from the Northern Alliance, from the other measures that we are putting in place." Still, for all of the applause in Washington and London, the conquest of the town will not deliver a knockout blow to the Taliban forces. Their political base is in Kandahar, well to the south and far beyond the reach of even an emboldened and better-equipped Northern Alliance. Officials of the Bush administration are also worried that victory might be tarnished by looting and reprisals by the Northern Alliance fighters in Mazar-i-Sharif. The White House had hoped that a post-Taliban regime would have coalesced by now and that Mazar-i-Sharif would be taken in the name of a broad anti-Taliban coalition, one that included Pashtuns as well as the Uzkeb- and Tajik-dominated Northern Alliance. But the military operations on the ground ran ahead of the politics. And the way the war has been going, the United States and Britain are happy for any victory they can get. nytimes.com